by Alan Black
Cherry explained how the extruder was really the ship’s property, just as most of the material the extruder used was the ship’s property. Her store’s whole investment boiled down to paying Tasso part-time wages. To charge market value was gouging. She smiled when she pointed out that keeping the pricing low brought in more customers, earning them more profit in the end than charging more now. She and Ain agreed that because you could charge more didn’t mean you should.
He understood the ship’s purchasing department was more than willing to pay higher pricing to a crewmember than to an outside business. Their final pricing was much lower than they could buy the goods on the open market, so that helped with their budgets. On the other hand, Cherry and Ain would spend any excess profit within the ship at other shops and restaurants, improving the overall ship’s internal economy.
It sounded like the most backwards negotiation Tasso had ever heard of. It would certainly have given his grandfather a heart attack to hear the buyer wanting to pay more and the seller refusing to take it.
Tasso went with Sergeant Rodriguez to another store on the promenade as soon as Security un-arrested him. He was happy to have the other man with him since Cruz hadn’t retracted his edict for Tasso to keep off the promenade. Nor had the older boy retracted any physical threats against Tasso for failure to comply.
The captain ordered Cruz’s graduation from trainee to crew delayed for a year. Many people said that was a mild punishment for his part in both attacks. Rodriguez said Eber rolled over on the older boy rather than be cut from the trainee football team. Tasso wasn’t sure what rolled over meant, but he gathered it had something to do with telling the truth. Flacco and Ivan had joined Eber so fast the recorder had to work overtime to keep up.
Still, Cruz had warned Tasso to stay off the promenade Saturday and Sunday afternoons so Tasso was determined to avoid Cruz if possible. Saturday hadn’t come around again yet, but Rodriguez took him to The Big Barn Saddle and Tackle Shop last Sunday afternoon. They glanced around other shops, but the saddle shop was their ultimate destination.
Most of the equipment baffled Tasso, as did the fact that he thought a tackle was something he’d read about happening in a football game, not something you did to horses. The sergeant showed him a picture of a saddle’s cinch, gave Tasso dimensions, and described his buckle and flexibility requirements. The sergeant also tried to explain how to use a cinch on a horse. Tasso gave up trying to understand; he knew it would be something he had to see. That didn’t mean he couldn’t make one.
A saddle cinch was like a bra snap extender in that he would have to see one in use to understand the whole concept, but he still made Cherry a couple dozen of the bra snap extenders. He would rather see how the bra snap extender worked in action rather than a saddle cinch, but Rodriguez was excited about the saddle straps. He was even more excited when Tasso offered to include his name, his horse’s name, his wife’s name, along with a picture of his new baby on the cinch, and make it all in his favorite color.
The owner of the saddle shop asked Tasso to stop cutting into his business. The man laughed when he said it. Tasso readily agreed to stop selling anything else the man sold. He also readily agreed to make and supply the man with cinches, bridle straps, and dozens of other pieces of gear he didn’t understand. He asked for an inventory list from the owner and offered to make special orders for custom equipment. Tasso explained costs and pricing were up to Cherry. Strangely enough, Cherry and the man came to a quick agreement. The pricing was much less than the man was willing to pay and much more than Cherry and Ain wanted to charge. Their deal included the saddle shop owner passing on some of the cost savings to his customers.
Tasso was looking forward to his date with Anisa tonight at the football game. He wasn’t sure she thought of it as a date, but he was. He made sure he had a clean change of clothes and he was planning to leave the attic early enough to shower and shave before meeting her. He wanted to ask Gordo about what he was supposed to do on a date, but he was too embarrassed to admit he’d never been on a date before.
He really wished he had a manual on dating. Since he didn’t, he turned back to the manual on the agricultural-processing plant. Like all manuals, he started reading at the beginning. He was amazed that the first chapter in the manual was about reading the manual. He didn’t expect anything to happen, but he opened a panel, twisted a few knobs, and depressed a button. A slow grinding noise made him jump back. A panel slid open and a chair slowly slid open for the processor operator. He was not sure what power supply the system had, but there was enough power still available after all these years to get to the operating systems. It sounded like a little lubricant would be a good thing to make the chair slide out smoothly and quietly, but it’d worked. He slid onto the chair, its position making it the perfect height to read. He was into the third chapter when he stopped. He called up the index, scanned through a section, and then another.
“Liars and thieves!” he shouted. He knew talking to yourself was a sign of going crazy, but he was angry. Extracting chiamra seeds from the stalks wasn’t too difficult for this machine. Seed extraction was a simple by-product of extracting the spice. In fact, the standard processing instructions were to pull seeds for replanting; it took additional processing instructions to leave the seeds in the stalks.
He and Grandpa had to buy back seeds under the guise that they were hand-extracted, whereas the machine performed the function with a simple procedure. Not only were they paid less than their spice was worth, they were charged for something that should’ve been theirs to begin with. The buyers told them the plant stalks and leaves required special handling because they were highly toxic, but the machine could easily convert the excess plant material to a nitrogen rich fertilizer. It could concentrate the nitrogen enrichment or dilute it depending on the buyer’s requirements. He didn’t know about other farming requirements, but according to the machine’s manual, the fertilizer process was an important part of the overall function and one of its original design requirements.
The machine had started out generations ago as a garbage and lawn clipping composting machine turning excess plant cellulose into hemp jute. Grandpa had a small composting machine for their gardens. They always put every left over organic material they could find into the little machine and worked the product back into the soil. Reworking the dirt was necessary to make the thin Saronno soil grow earth-style vegetables. He was sure the fertilizer wouldn’t be as valuable as the spice itself. On a nitrogen-loaded planet like Saronno, their plant sludge was so nitrogen rich it became worthless as a fertilizer or soil additive, but he was sure it had value in its own right on some planet. He made a mental note to ask Purser Rojo about the price of fertilizer. Maybe reworked organic compounds didn’t pay enough to transport by spacecraft.
He went back to the index, looking for a reference on chiamra spice. He found a small reference in the back mentioning the spice by name. It said the spice was not a food spice, but a proven aphrodisiac for a woman’s libido. He stopped reading the manual and looked up ‘aphrodisiac’ and ‘libido’ on the shipnet dictionary. He blushed bright red when he realized what he and his grandfather had been growing.
“Tasso Menzies,” a voice boomed out of his dataport. “Where are you?”
Tasso blushed again. He was sure someone had spotted his shipnet search and he was going to get in trouble for looking up naughty words. Grandpa always said if a word was not fit for use in mixed company, there was no reason for him to know it. There was certainly no reason for him to be looking up anything about a woman’s libido.
“I’m in the attic, sir.”
The voice came from his dataport, but also made a strange stereo sound. “This is Security Sergeant Rodriquez, Tasso. I know you’re in the attic, I’m tracking your locator, but I can’t find you.”
Tasso leaned over and looked into the aisles between the stacks of stored goods. The sergeant was only a few feet from him.
“Hi,”
Tasso said.
“Boy howdy!” Rodriguez said. “This place is a maze. I don’t know how you find your way around.”
Tasso shrugged. “I grew up in a place that was mostly tall rocks and high canyon walls. I don’t know whether it’s something I learned to keep from getting lost or if I have some natural ability keeping me from getting lost. I don’t get lost often.” Tasso slid out of the operator’s seat. He reversed his earlier commands and the seat started to slide back into the machine. He was pleased to hear it slide in much quieter than when it came out. He decided it must’ve been creaking from disuse. It stopped halfway and slipped open again. “Gosh!” he cursed.
Rodriguez said with a laugh, “Such language, young man. Problem?”
“Sorry, sir, the seat should have retracted all the way. Anyway, what can I do for you, or are you here to arrest me for something else?”
Rodriguez laughed at Tasso’s honest curiosity, knowing the boy wasn’t concerned, sarcastic, or trying to be funny. Rodriguez said. “Well, I am lost. I came up here with a small crew to check out that cannon of yours.”
Tasso shook his head, “It isn’t my cannon, Sergeant. I just found it.”
“Finders keepers,” Rodriguez laughed. “Isn’t that what we said as kids?”
Tasso smiled, but shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard that before. I kind of gather my childhood wasn’t quite like a normal Texican. Anyway, where is your crew?”
“We couldn’t find the cannon, so I parked them by the front hatch. I thought I’d come and get you to show me where it’s located. I’m so lost right now that I couldn’t even find the hatch if I didn’t have a locator on my guys.”
“This is a fun place, isn’t it?” Tasso laughed again. “It’s kind of like hunting for hidden treasure.” He led the sergeant through a few aisles between crates stacked from deck to ceiling. They even went over a few stacks rather than take the time to go around them. It didn’t take long before they stood in front of a stack of crates with distinctive markings on them.
“The painted red stripe is what first caught my attention,” Tasso pointed out. “I hadn’t seen those markings before, so I stopped to check things out. Naturally, I went to the biggest crate. He pointed at a container the size of a flitter. “I pulled enough packing material away to see what was inside.” He recited from memory, “Cannon, Harboard Industries rotating A/A E/12 30mm SM, one each.” He tapped his dataport. It displayed a 3D image of the cannon for the sergeant.
“Sheep shit on a side saddle!” Rodriguez exclaimed. “I thought this was a cannon. I mean it is, but it’s more like a side-mounted gatling gun for a tank or an attack shuttle. The cannon spits out 30mm shells from twelve rotating barrels.”
Tasso nodded. “I don’t know anything about cannons, but I figure the ‘SM’ part of the name means it self-manufactures its own ammunition. My grandfather once had me read the manual for a Rumsfelt .55 caliber hand-held auto cannon that self-manufactures, too. I imagine a Rumsfelt has a smaller material chamber than this thing.”
Rodriguez nodded and looked around at the other red striped crates. “I hope so. I’d hate to think that some of these boxes have ammunition in them, that is … well, who knows how old? Do you think the cannon works?”
Tasso shook his head. “I doubt it. I haven’t found anything in this whole place that works. A few things take some minor repair, like the extruder in Cherry’s Lingerie Shop. Most things are scrap that I’ve been breaking down for component parts. We won’t know until we unpack it and check it out.”
Rodriguez said, “I can unpack it, but we can’t test fire a cannon inside the ship. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to open a hole to space. I’m a firm believer in continuing to breathe oxygen.”
“Do you think this cannon could blow a hole that far in the ship?”
“What do you mean that far?” Rodriguez asked. He pointed at the back wall. “That bulkhead butts up against the ship’s hull.”
Tasso thought for a second and asked, “You mean, I’ve been working back there and I’m only a few meters away from a vacuum.”
Rodriguez said, “That’s a greenhorn’s thought. You should never forget you’re only a few feet away from not being able to breathe.”
Tasso nodded, “If the cannon works, we should make sure the material chamber is empty, and we set it on dry fire only.”
“Do you know if it has that kind of setting?”
“No, but the Rumsfelt did. I suggest we read the manual completely before we do any more than unpack it.”
They heard a scrambling behind them.
“Next aisle over,” Rodriguez shouted. “My team is trying to find us by my locator signal.”
A voice floated back to them. “I know that much, Rodriguez. But every aisle leads off in the wrong direction.”
Tasso shouted, “So, climb over the top!”
General laughing and noise was followed by an avalanche of bodies as four men climbed over and down again. Tasso was disturbed to see the three crewmen and one trainee. He nodded at the men, but spoke to the trainee. “Hello, Ivan.”
Rodriguez smiled. “That’s right. You two trainee’s know each other.”
Ivan laughed, “Yes, Sergeant. We’re old acquaintances.” He slapped Tasso on the shoulder. “How ya doin’, buddy?”
Tasso hesitated, but replied, “I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. How’re you doing?”
Ivan said. “The captain gave me community service as punishment for our little dust up in the shower the other day.” All of the other men were looking around them when Ivan raised a middle finger at Tasso behind Rodriguez’s back and mouthed something at Tasso.
Tasso wasn’t sure he understood. It looked like Ivan said ‘vacuum’, but he could tell the other boy wasn’t being as pleasant as he was pretending. He didn’t know what community service was, but it certainly didn’t seem like punishment, it sounded more like something everyone should be doing anyway. But, he was really confused about dust in the shower. How could showers be dusty?
Ivan nodded. “And I lucked out. I only have to spend one day a week helping out in the Security Office for the next six months. If every day is as much fun as today, then you did me a favor.”
“Um, thanks.”
Rodriguez showed Tasso’s dataport image to his team. “This is the cannon Tasso found for us.” He slapped the large crate. “It’s in here. We’re going to unpack it and check it out. However, no one, and I mean no one, is to touch it until our expert says it’s okay.”
Tasso looked around. Not shooting a cannon by accident made sense since there was only a relatively thin shell of titanium between them and a vacuum. He wondered who the expert on the team was.
Rodriguez put a hand on Tasso’s shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Tasso?”
Tasso blanched when he realized Rodriguez thought of him as the expert.
Rodriguez continued. “According to Tasso’s initial report, this cannon may make its own ammo, so we don’t want any accidents. He checks it out before we do anything. It’s also his assessment that it may be damaged. So, we want to watch out for malfunctions. Anything else, Señor Expert?”
Tasso gulped, but managed to keep his voice normal, “Well, Sergeant Rodriguez. I wouldn’t actually uncrate it here. There isn’t much room to move around, plus you’d have to clean up and haul the packing material out.”
Ivan laughed with ill-disguised displeasure. “Hauling the trash out would’ve been my job. So, if I don’t have any clean up, then I don’t have anything to do, right?”
Rodriguez said, “Easy, boy. I’m sure we all have more to get done than we can do today. What do you have in mind, Tasso?”
Tasso looked around him at all of the red striped crates. “I’d haul all of this to an open space up by the front hatch. That’s the largest clear space in the attic. You should move all of the red striped stuff up there before you open any of it up. It’s my assumption the red strip means it’s military equi
pment. Red stripe means danger or caution, right? At least, all of this stuff is clustered together.”
One of the security men looked skeptical. “We can probably wrangle most of these boxes around if we have to, but we can’t drag them far. Plus some of the aisles in here are so tight we could barely squeeze our bodies through.”
Tasso nodded as he thought. “I have a small power sled here in the attic. It isn’t big, but it has enough lifting power to move anything I’ve found so far in here. It just doesn’t have a big enough platform for the cannon or most of these other crates.”
Rodriguez said, “We can center the crates on the sled and balance them as we work our way out.”
“I just unboxed an agricultural-processing plant. The side I opened is pretty big and heavy. It’s wood with metal banding. I say we get the sled and bolt the wooden piece onto the top. It should make a stable platform. We won’t go through the aisles, we’ll go over the top, and use the sled to float into a clear zone.
Ivan said, “Great! I won’t have to haul the packing material from here to the trash chute.”
Tasso said, “Oh no. We can’t throw anything away. I need the packing material for recycling. For that matter, any metal packing material would probably make good raw product for making 30mm shells. I’m sure I can use it in the agricultural-processing plant, if I can get it running and I know I can use it in the extruder down in Cherry’s shop. Well, the extruder doesn’t use the metal, but the cannon will use all of the scrap metal we can find, not that we want to load this right away.”
He checked his time.
